OBS. 27.—­The preceding instructions, faulty and ungrammatical as they are, seem to be the best that our writers have furnished upon this point.  To detect falsities and blunders, is half the grammarian’s duty.  The pronouns of which the term self or selves forms a part, are used, not for the connecting of different clauses of a sentence, but for the purpose of emphatic distinction in the sense.  In calling them “relatives,” Churchill is wrong, even by his own showing.  They have not the characteristics which he himself ascribes to relatives; but are compound personal pronouns, and nothing else.  He is also manifestly wrong in asserting, that they are severally “the same in all three cases.”  From the very nature of their composition, the possessive case is alike impossible to them all.  To express ownership with emphasis or distinction, we employ neither these compounds nor any others; but always use the simple possessives with the separate adjective own:  as, “With my own eyes,”—­“By thy own confession,”—­“To his own house,”—­“For her own father,”—­“By its own weight,”—­“To save our own lives,”—­“For your own sake,”—­“In their own cause.”

OBS. 28.—­The phrases, my own, thy own, his own, and so forth, Dr. Perley, in his little Grammar, has improperly converted by the hyphen into compound words:  calling them the possessive forms of myself, thyself, himself, and so forth; as if one set of compounds could constitute the possessive case of an other!  And again, as if the making of eight new pronouns for two great nations, were as slight a feat, as the inserting of so many hyphens!  The word own, anciently written owen, is an adjective; from an old form of the perfect participle of the verb to owe; which verb, according to Lowth and others, once signified to possess.  It is equivalent to due, proper, or peculiar; and, in its present use as an adjective, it stands nowhere else than between the possessive case and the name of the thing possessed; as, “The Boy’s Own Book,”—­“Christ’s own words,”—­“Solomon’s own and only son.”  Dr. Johnson, while he acknowledges the abovementioned derivation, very strangely calls own a noun substantive; and, with not more accuracy, says:  “This is a word of no other use than as it is added to the possessive pronouns, my, thy, his, our, your, their.”—­Quarto Dict., w.  Own.  O. B. Peirce, with obvious untruth, says, “Own is used in combination with a name or substitute, and as a part of it, to constitute it emphatic.”—­Gram., p. 63.  He writes it separately, but parses it as a part of the possessive noun or pronoun which precedes it!